Trucks participating in a cross-country convoy protesting COVID-19 vaccine mandates and restrictions in Ottawa, January, 2022.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
If there is one thing Canada’s Conservatives believe in, it is getting tough on crime.
Wherever there is a debate on what penalties should be imposed for criminal offences, Conservatives stand squarely and proudly for more. Whether as a matter of deterrence, or simple retribution, Conservatives almost always favour longer sentences rather than shorter.
Except, it seems, when the criminals involved are their friends. Take, for example, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, organizers of the notorious “Freedom Convoy” that took much of downtown Ottawa hostage for three weeks in 2022, and folk heroes to the populist right.
The duo were convicted earlier this year on charges of mischief and (in Mr. Barber’s case) counselling others to disobey a court order, much to the dismay of certain sections of the right. But it was the recommendation by the Crown, at their sentencing hearing, that they be given seven and eight years in jail, respectively, that really lit the fuse.
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“While rampant violent offenders are released hours after their most recent charges,” fumed Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, “the Crown wants seven years prison time for the charge of mischief for Lich and Barber. How is this justice?”
Deputy Leader Melissa Lantsman claimed, without evidence, that the Crown prosecutor was seeking “political vengeance,” holding this up as an example of “why trust in our institutions is dwindling.” Conservative MP Andrew Lawton complained of the Crown’s “vindictive” penalties for “a three-week peaceful protest almost three and a half years ago.”
Let’s get one thing straight off the top: these are the Crown’s recommendations for sentencing, not the actual sentences, which are to be handed down in October. The Crown nearly always asks for more than it expects to get, just as the defence asks for less, each hoping to influence the judge’s sense of what is “reasonable.” Comparing the Crown’s recommendations in this case to this or that allegedly light sentence handed down in another, altogether different case is not only cherry-picking but comparing apples to oranges (cherries?).
Was this a mere “peaceful” protest? Here again some clarification is in order. The crime of “mischief” does not mean mere youthful hijinks. It ranges from destroying property (for example, blowing up a bridge) to “obstructing or interfering with” other people’s use of it; in the most serious cases, it is punishable by life in prison.
The Ottawa protest may not have been violent, but it was anything but peaceful. The forcible occupation of a city centre is still the use of force, even if no actual violence is deployed. And the threat of it hung heavy in the air. There was a reason, after all, why police hesitated to move in, just as there was a reason why tow-truck operators were unwilling to tow the trucks away: because they were terrified of the consequences.
More than that, the protest, in its size and duration, posed an unprecedented threat to civil order and the rule of law. It wasn’t just an inconvenience to local residents, but put their health and sanity at risk: whether from the endless ear-splitting honking, the harassment and intimidation of passersby, or the open fires (near propane tanks) on city streets.
Police and court orders to disperse, or at least cease the honking, were openly and repeatedly defied. The lawlessness soon spread to other sites across the country. It is an open question how much worse things might have become had the Emergencies Act not finally been invoked.
And all in the service of, at the least, extorting the government or, in the fevered imagining of some of the organizers, replacing the government with a junta made of the Governor General, the Senate, and themselves. That is a vastly more serious matter than a mere protest. That it did not devolve into overt violence had more to do with the restraint of the authorities than the tact of the protesters.
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Are the penalties recommended by the Crown out of line with those imposed in other unlawful protests? It is noteworthy how equally convinced commentators on the right and left are that their protests are more harshly retreated than the other side’s.
Again, it’s easy to cherry-pick. You can point to Indigenous protesters who were let off with a warning for tearing down a statue. Or you can consider the case of Mohawk activist Shawn Brant, charged with mischief in 2007 for leading the blockade, for a little more than a day, of the CN rail line between Montreal and Toronto and, for 11 hours, Highway 401.
For this act of “non-violent” protest, the Crown initially recommended a sentence of 12 years. In the end, he got time served. Let’s wait and see what the judge decides in this case.